KirstenBarta

March 9, 2016

Partners: Selling is even easier with new marketing automation tools and expanded Intermedia University

One thing I hear from many VARs and MSPs that belong to Intermedia’s partner program is that they don’t really have the time and expertise to run formal marketing campaigns. I get it. Effective campaigns can take a lot time to pull off, and you really need a team of people to create and coordinate all the components.

But marketing efforts can bring in a lot of sales leads, so it’s worth doing if you can manage it. With the cloud developing and changing so rapidly, an effective marketing strategy is extra important to acquiring new customers. So, to make it super easy for partners to reach prospective customers, Intermedia has rolled out a new through-partner marketing automation platform.

New marketing automation tool makes launching campaigns fast and easy

Our new marketing automation tool makes launching marketing campaigns really fast — less than 5 minutes, in fact.The easy-to-use platform contains unique and compelling content that you can brand as your own with pre-made templates for email, landing pages, social media and more. Automated workflows let you schedule the entire campaign and simply let it go to work for you. And you also have access to campaign metrics and real-time lead alerts to help track the success of your campaigns and win new customers.

We’ve got a couple of campaigns ready to go in the tool with several more campaigns coming in the next few months. So now is a great time to get started using these campaigns to win new business.

And speaking of new business…You can further drive your own success by accessing dynamic on-demand courseware within the new and improved Intermedia University. This great training platform gives you the knowledge and expertise to effectively close the leads you generate through the marketing automation platform.

Intermedia University is now bigger and better than ever

We originally launched Intermedia University in February 2015 to help partners close deals efficiently and effectively. We started with a vast library of interactive, on-demand training courses for selling Intermedia voice services. The content ranged from introductory lessons to expert advice, with relevance to partners of all levels of experience.

The impact has been astounding. We’ve found that active Hosted PBX partners using Intermedia University have sold an average of 65% more Hosted PBX services than those who haven’t used the platform!

So we’ve now expanded the course offerings to include training resources forHosted Microsoft® Exchange, Email Archiving and SecuriSync®. In addition to self-paced video webinars, we’ve added integrated certification quizzes, so you can test and certify your new knowledge. We’ve also updated the user interface with a new look and feel, as well as more intelligent navigation.

I asked Jon Borgese, our Sr. Director of Channel Marketing, what he thinks about Intermedia University:

“As a ‘partner first’ company, Intermedia is always looking for ways to expand its tools and resources to help partners grow their cloud business. Intermedia University is gaining traction quickly because it’s primarily designed to help educate partners so they can close more deals.”

More about Intermedia’s partner program

Not an Intermedia partner yet? Here’s why you should be:

1. Intermedia’s Office in the Cloud™ enables you to resell more than 30+ essential cloud services, including email, phone systems, backup & file sharing and security solutions. Our services are all mobile, reliable and managed through a single control panel. This helps you reduce overhead and create major efficiencies, because you only have one vendor, one bill, one source of support and one place to administer services.

2. You get full control over how you run your cloud business with the flexibility of three different partnership models. And uniquely with Intermedia, you can choose which model you want to sell under on a customer-by-customer basis, depending on what’s best for your business and your customers.

Private Label: Retain full customer ownership with control over billing, branding and margins.

Advisor: We handle both billing and technical support and you earn generous commissions over the life of the customer account.

Referral: Pass Intermedia leads to close.

3. You get support throughout every aspect of the customer lifecycle. Every Intermedia partner has access to premium marketing support and an assigned sales representative who will work with you to turn leads into sales. And after each sale, Intermedia’s Cloud Concierge™ team will fully handle the migration of your customers to the cloud – ensuring no downtime. Finally, on an ongoing basis, Intermedia provides you (or your customers, depending on which model you select) with 24/7 expert technical support with typical hold times of less than 60 seconds.